Qin Yongpei completes sentence

On 31 October 2024, human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei completed a five-year sentence, was released from prison, and returned to his home in Nanning, Guangxi Province.

On 31 March 2023, the Nanning Municipal Intermediate Court in Guangxi province convicted human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei of “inciting subversion to State power” and sentenced him to five years in prison, to be followed by three years of “deprivation of political rights”. The human rights defender said he would appeal.

According to the verdict, the court’s decision was based on the human rights defender’s online speech on Twitter and on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo criticising government wrongdoing and corruption, the interviews he gave to overseas media outlets, and his role in establishing a support group for disbarred human rights lawyers. The court said these acts amount to disinformation and libel against the government, the judiciary, and the Chinese Communist Party, and thus constitute “incitement to subversion of State power” under article 105(2) of the Criminal Law.

The human rights defender has been in detention since late October 2019 and was tried on 31 December 2021. In September 2022, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention ruled that Qin Yongpei’s detention is arbitrary because his fair trial rights were not guaranteed and that the charge of “inciting subversion of State power” is so ill-defined that it fails to meet the principle of legal certainty. The Working Group also ruled that the human rights defender’s arrest and detention were in retaliation against his exercise of his human rights, including the rights to defend human rights, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. The Working Group called for his release and for the Chinese government to amend its Criminal Law, including article 105, to align it with China’s human rights obligations under international law.

Front Line Defenders strongly condemns today’s verdict against Qin Yongpei as it believes it is solely in retaliation against his peaceful and legitimate human rights work. We call on the relevant authorities in China to promptly quash the conviction and sentence against Qin Yongpei and immediately release him.

After spending more than two years in pre-trial detention, human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei was tried at the Nanning Intermediate People's Court on 31 December 2021. His family and lawyer were informed of the trial date only on four days before, on 27 December 2021. The presiding judge rejected the request by the human rights defender's lawyer to call defence witnesses. Apart from his lawyer and his wife, who obtained permission to defend her husband in court, no other family members, including the human rights defender's daughters, were allowed to attend the trial. The trial ended without a verdict.

On 4 August 2021, Deng Xiaoyun was allowed to meet her husband and human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei at a detention centre in Nanning. This was the first time she has seen him since he was detained in October 2019. Qin Yongpei looked emaciated and his hair has greyed. The human rights defender told his wife that he will not plead guilty and that he wishes for his trial to be open to the public.

On 11 July 2021, Qin Yongpei's mother passed away and he was not allowed to temporarily leave the detention center to visit his mother when she was gravely ill or to attend the funeral after her death, even though China's Regulations of detention centres allow for such temporary visits on humanitarian grounds.

On the morning of 4 February, human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei was allowed to meet with his lawyer at the Nanning Municipal No. 2 Detention Centre. He was previously held at the Nanning Municipal No. 1 Detention Centre and transferred to the new location in late January 2021.

Earlier this week, the UN made public an 11-page joint letter which six UN Special Procedures sent to the Chinese government in December 2020. The UN experts expressed serious concerns that Qin Yongpei appears to have been detained and prosecuted for doing his job as a lawyer and exercising his right to freedom of expression, and that his wife and daughters have also been subjected to police harassment.

The UN experts asked the Chinese government to provide details and explain the legal and factual basis for his arrest, detention, prosecution, the seizure of his personal properties, as well as the denial of his access to legal counsel during the first months of his detention. They asked the Chinese government whether it has taken any measures "to ensure the right of lawyers to practice their profession in a safe and enabling environment is guaranteed." They also pressed the government on how it could claim at the Human Rights Council that it has promoted human rights through poverty alleviation, while at the same time forcing human rights lawyers and their families into poverty by restricting their right to practice law.

The Chinese government's one-paragraph response a few weeks later failed to answer in any meaningful manner the many questions posed by the UN experts.

Between 14-16 April 2020, police and local district officials in Guangxi province visited and harassed Deng Xiaoyun, Qin Yongpei's wife, and their older daughter; Deng Xiaoyun's older brother, younger brother, and father; and Qin Yongpei's 87-year-old mother and one of his older sisters. The police and local officials warned Deng Xiaoyun, and told other family members to warn her, to stop her social media posting on Twitter. Deng Xiaoyun's recent Twitter posts alleged that the arrest of her husband is a reprisal against his previous complaints against top public security officials in Guilin, Guangxi province.

On 2 March 2020, the Nanning Municipal Public Security Bureau in Guangxi province formally transferred the case against human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei (覃永沛) to the Nanning Municipal People’s Procuratorate for review for prosecution on the charge of “inciting subversion of State power”. Qin Yongpei has been in police custody since 31 October 2019 and is currently detained at the Nanning Municipal Detention Centre No. 1. Under Chinese law, the procuratorate must make a decision on whether to prosecute the case within a month and may extend the deadline for another 15 days if the case is deemed “major” or “complicated”; it may also return the case back to the police for supplementary investigation.

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In a legal career spanning more than a decade, Qin Yongpei has defended other human rights lawyers facing reprisals from the authorities, provided legal assistance to vulnerable groups, and took up cases involving unlawful administrative detention, industrial pollution, forced demolition of housing, and wrongful convictions. He is the founder and director of the Guangxi Baijuming Law Firm, where several human rights lawyers in Guangxi also worked. In July 2015, he was briefly taken and questioned by police in what has become known as the “709 Crackdown” targeting human rights lawyers and other defenders across China. He has often taken to online platforms to comment on State policies and actions, including incidents of abuse of power by officials and human rights violations. He has had multiple social media accounts shut down because of his online postings critical of the government.

In May 2018, the authorities revoked Qin Yongpei’s lawyer’s license and ordered him to shut down his law firm. He then founded a legal consultancy services company to continue his legal work. After his license was revoked, Qin Yongpei submitted a complaint against Fu Zhenghua, China’s Minister of Justice, to the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection (CCDI), a top internal body within the Communist Party of China responsible for enforcing party rules and combating corruption and malfeasance among party members. In his complaint, Qin Yongpei accused Fu Zhenghua of ordering the revocation of human rights lawyers’ licenses, which he argued constituted abuse of power and malfeasance. In November 2018, he also sued the Guangxi Justice Bureau for its decision to revoke his lawyer’s license, and sought financial compensation.

On 31 October 2019, police detained Qin Yongpei after they raided, searched, and seized computers and other belongings from his legal consultancy company’s office in Nanning city, without showing a warrant. On the same day, the police also searched his home and took away electronic devices, without providing the family with an inventory of the seized items as required by law. Qin Yongpei has been in police custody since then and is currently detained at the Nanning Municipal Detention Centre No. 1.

In November 2019, the Nanning Public Security Bureau refused requests by Qin Yongpei’s two lawyers to meet their client, without providing a reason in the written refusal notice. The two lawyers also requested the police to provide them with any main facts of the alleged crime that had been ascertained by the police at the time, but the police refused on the ground that doing so would risk “potential leaks of State secrets”. On 3 December 2019, the police formally arrested Qin Yongpei on the charge of “inciting subversion of State power”.

On 6 December 2019, the two lawyers lodged a complaint with the Nanning procuratorate against the Nanning police for these refusals, which they argue are in violations of Chinese law and regulations governing the rights of suspects and of lawyers in carrying out their professional duties. The Nanning procuratorate responded that the police had acted lawfully. In January and February 2020, the police continued to refuse the lawyers’ requests for meeting Qin Yongpei.

On 26 February 2020, the Nanning police took Qin Yongpei’s two young daughters separately to a police station for questioning. The police asked them whether they knew about their father’s online postings and their “political content”, whether he talked to them about politics, and whether he criticised the Communist Party of China and the government during conversations at home.

Front Line Defenders is seriously concerned about the ongoing detention of Qin Yongpei and the transfer of his case for review for prosecution as these measures are believed to be a reprisal for his activities as a human rights lawyer and his criticisms of State policies and actions, particularly the persecution of human rights lawyers.